Perch @perchingpath@eldritch.cafe

Gayfeather, colic-root, rattlesnake-master, blazing star,( devil's bite, Cahaba torch, prairie-pine,) I took your list to that fireworks store in Upland, gathered & checked off each rocket, then imagined how you'd stare at a forest fire (guilty? gleeful?) as I put them all back.

I saw another foraging party of black vultures (& clasped my hands at my chest in delight). It was a younger group—some still had mussed manes of juvenile feathers! They'd dragged a roadside meal halfway up a hill, and again felt like the sort of party I'd covet an invitation to.

Sunsets can be safely watched through the windows of moving vehicles, or through meshes of branches parallaxing as you run. In other circumstances, even the best thereof, the need to be elsewhere can swell until it constricts the lungs.

At some point I heard Dennis Wheatley tell an interviewer that while he knew any number of prominent occultists, he'd always refrained, himself, because that sort of enthusiasm made one apt to neglect one's wife & career.

The ghost haunts a subway bench at 13th Street until the fluorescent tubes wear out. The ghost haunts the sidewalk flower beds at Market & 38th until the ornamental cabbages desiccate.

Bit that finial clean off. Snap! Gone. One less orb on your manse.

Suddenly I dove under the bed and gently bundled a stunned mouse into my handkerchief. That brings me even with the cats at 1-all for the season.

Chain-chewing Sichuan peppercorns to hoax my tongue into reporting an unexpected frost, admonishing the incredulous rest of me not to doubt it.

Emitting frequent gamma-ray bursts to the detriment of my houseplants.

In a better night where you are is serene, restful, & I'm out sweating on a runoff-wrecked wasteland heath 60 miles from nowhere in a crowd whose devout love of explosions, unsullied by patriotism, has us ready to blow up the whole sky.

My album of the year so far is Moor Jewelry's True Opera. A way through useless bitter fugs of dread, over&over. Punk, I guess, jagged, I guess, but every instrument unavoidable & infinitely textured always like a comforting weight of sea-eroded concrete.
https://moorxjewelry.bandcamp.com/track/look-alive

My album of the year so far is the new Kaatayra, Só Quem Viu o Relâmpago à Sua Direita Sabe. Woven sunshower-metal roar about dissolving into the trees.
https://kaatayra.bandcamp.com/track/desnatura-o-de-si-mesmo

In the dream we spoke to each other as mountaineers. We called out piton positions, admitted we'd started too late in the day and were succumbing to cold & fatigue. Our bodies knelt warm indoors, nailing shirts to the floor until each was outlined by hundreds of dull steel heads.